For the second straight year — despite the Charles H. Flowers High School wrestling team’s best effort — Parkdale is king of the Winter Blitz tournament.

The Riverdale school ran away with the team title and had six wrestlers win individual championships at the two-day event held at Flowers.

“It was there for us to lose this year,” Panthers coach Adam Forschner said. “We did pretty good. We did what was expected.”

Parkdale, which burst onto the scene in Prince George’s County at this same tournament last year, featured eight wrestlers in the finals while Flowers had seven and High Point sent four. The Jaguars were the runner-up with four individual champions and 253 team points. Parkdale recorded 278. High Point placed third with 198 points and had eight wrestlers place third or better in their respective weight classes.

The match of the night, at least on paper, came between Flowers’ Terron Paden and Parkdale’s undefeated 195-pounder Terry Nance. The pair felt each other out for the opening 1 minute, 30 seconds before Nance lifted Paden in the air and took him down. He proceeded to record six back points on two near falls and ended the first with an 8-0 lead. Paden appeared to be favoring an injured left shoulder throughout a majority of the match. Nance took advantage and pinned Paden in the second period.

“At first, I was nervous, but this was a big match for me,” said Nance, who was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Wrestler. “There’s some pressure when you go out there and you’re undefeated, but I went out there and got it done.”

The final match of the evening certainly entertained the crowd as Parkdale’s Thomas Velez pinned Flowers heavyweight William Chapman in the second period after each scored four points on the other in an unusually action-packed heavyweight bout. It was the fourth of four consecutive championship-match victories for the Panthers.

“I was feeling nervous when I heard that Flowers was catching up to us,” Velez said. “But at the end of the first period, the first thing I thought of was my mom. She’s at work right now, but I exploded off the pistol, started thinking about her and did it for her and for my team.”

High Point, which has recently been very strong at the lower weights, received a dominant effort from 106-pounder Denis Robles-Gomez, who was one of three wrestlers to win all of their tournament matches via falls. Robles-Gomez downed Parkdale’s Deshawn Taylor in the finals.

“He’s doing well,” Eagles coach Andrew Vernor said. “He’s in a great place physically, mentally and has a good work ethic. He’s got to continue that, but so far, so good.”

In what was arguably the most exciting match of the finals, Flowers 126-pounder Carlton Gray defeated High Point’s Christian Hernandez in the last second with a takedown near the scorer’s table. The two were tied, 4-4, in a well-fought bout before Gray sprung to action in the final seconds and secured much-needed team points, at the time, for the Jaguars.

At the 145-pound weight class, Henry A. Wise’s Gregory Johnson and Flowers’ Limini Sherman also fought to a one-point result. After Sherman was charged with a pair of technical violations, Johnson took at 3-2 lead into the third period and, despite Sherman’s best efforts, Johnson was able to ride him out for the thrilling victory.

The only wrestlers to win a finals match from a school other than Flowers, High Point and Parkdale were Johnson (Wise), Surrattsville’s Mareico Green and Oxon Hill’s Darrian Hollings.

“The guys have been putting in a lot of hard work and it’s showing,” Oxon Hill coach Sean Edelin said. “I was very impressed with [Hollings’] performance because he’s been sick all week with the flu.”

The most unusual match of the night session belonged to Parkdale’s Fernando Hurdle and Oxon Hill’s Kyrahn Perez. It ended 1-0 in Hurdle’s favor. The 182-pound grapplers couldn’t score on one another. That trend continued into the third and the only point of the match was awarded to Hurdle after Perez was called for stalling midway through the final period.